Swamp Thing #3

Berni Wrightson's cover for this March 1973 issue is a genuinely arresting image: the mossy, hulking Swamp Thing clutches a woman with flowing hair as bolts of crackling yellow energy slash across the composition, while grasping skeletal hands lunge toward them from the foreground and a mob of torch-bearing figures rages in the fiery background. The title "The Patchwork Man" promises the kind of moody horror-tinged storytelling that Len Wein and Wrightson brought to this series, and the cover delivers that atmosphere in spades. At just 20 cents, this 1973 DC gem captures everything unsettling and strangely poignant about Swamp Thing's world.